Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤) told Micron Technology Inc president and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra that Beijing would welcome the US semiconductor company deepening its footprint in the Chinese market, signaling a further thaw in relations between the world’s top two economies.
In a meeting on Wednesday, Wang told Mehrotra that China would optimize the environment for foreign investment and provide service guarantees for foreign firms, according to a brief statement published yesterday on the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s Web site.
“We welcome Micron Technology to continue to take root in the Chinese market and achieve better development under the premise of complying with Chinese laws and regulations,” Wang added.
Photo: Bloomberg
The detente comes just months after China’s cyberspace regulator said Micron had failed a network security review and barred Chinese operators of key infrastructure from buying from the largest US memory chipmaker.
China’s move against Micron was widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s access to key technology.
It came just a day after G7 nations agreed they would look to “de-risk, not decouple” from China, and as the US pressured allies to join it in restricting chip equipment exports to China.
The meeting between Wang and Mehrotra is in line with a recent thawing in tensions between Washington and Beijing, as officials from both countries work to organize a meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping (習近平), later this month at the APEC summit in San Francisco.
Washington wants to build an economic relationship with Beijing that takes into account national security and human rights and is fair to both sides, US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said on Thursday.
In laying out the Biden administration’s economic approach toward the Indo-Pacific region, Yellen said Washington does not seek to decouple from China, but it wants to diversify by investing at home and boosting links with trusted countries in the region.
“We’ve put forward a vision of the world grounded in values we share with these allies and partners and in which there is also a healthy and stable economic relationship between the United States and China,” Yellen said in a speech hosted by the Asia Society less than two weeks before the annual meeting of APEC leaders.
Additional reporting by AP
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS